Would Hillary have outperformed Obama's general election numbers in 2008?

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Re: Would Hillary have outperformed Obama's general election numbers in 2008?

Yes.

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She would have wan MO, WV and maybe Arkansas, while losing Indiana, Colorado, North Carolina and maybe Virginia.

No to Colorado, Virginia, and North Carolina.

Those states would have carried for Hillary Clinton with the same 7.26 percentage-points margin won in a Democratic pickup of the U.S. Popular Vote by likewise Democratic presidential-pickup winner Barack Obama.

Indiana and Missouri produced margins no greater in spread, with both Elections 2008 and 2012, of 1.16 percentage points. (And that spread was in 2008, when John McCain won a narrow Republican hold of ex-bellwether Missouri while Barack Obama won a narrow Democratic pickup of Indiana.)

If Hillary Clinton would have won by a stronger margin, in 2008, by three to five additional points, all of Barack Obama's 2008 Democratic pickups would have also gone to Hillary Clinton … plus Arkansas, Missouri, and West Virginia. An additional five points would've been enough for Montana and Georgia. (On the cusp: John McCain's home state Arizona. And, because the presidential race would not have been the same, one has to consider Louisiana. Beyond that are Tennessee and Kentucky, which have carried the same since 1956. A split outcome between those two states would've yielded a Democratic pickup of Tennessee.)

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The most comprehensive analysis I have read on this estimated that Obama lost 3-5% of the national PV due to hesitant white support, which would more than cancel out the 1.5-2% he gained from historic black turnout and margins.  That suggests a generic white Dem would have won about 57/40 in 2008, which looks consistent with incumbent party performance under economic crisis conditions like FDR over Hoover in 1932.

This means Hillary Clinton would have won a Democratic pickup of the U.S. Popular Vote with a percentage margin between 13.26 and 17.26 points.

That would have been a 2004-to-2008 shift of D+15.72 to D+19.72.

This also means, rather than win the popular vote, as Barack Obama did, by about 9.5 million raw votes…the one for Hillary Clinton would have been an estimated amount between 17 and 23 million. Quite frankly…that would have produced a 40-state landslide in the Electoral College. (Included with that is Texas.)

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She probably would have lost IN & NC and won MO. IN is the one state that Dems on the natl level will never win again.

What are you basing this on?

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351: Sen. Hillary Clinton(D-NY)/Sen. Evan Bayh(D-IN)
187: Sen. John McCain(R-AZ)/Former Rep. J. C. Watts(R-OK)

Clinton wins the black vote 82-17. Large numbers of black voters in Virginia and North Carolina flip especially large as J. C. Watts campaigns hard there in October and November.

In 2004, when incumbent Republican president George W. Bush defeated Democratic challenger John Kerry in the U.S. Popular Vote by 2.46 percentage points, national Democratic support from blacks were 88 percent. (The winning Republican received 11 percent.) Between 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012, Republicans reached 10 percent from blacks nationally only in 2004 (when they won the U.S. Popular Vote). That party's percentage from blacks, nationwide, were: 9 percent (in 2000), 11 percent (in 2004), 4 percent (in 2008), and 6 percent (in 2012).

You have, in your scenario, Hillary Clinton having won a Democratic pickup in the Electoral College with "351" electoral votes (up from the 252 mathematical ones from 2004's losing candidate John Kerry)…and, yet, you also have blacks having shifted Republican nationally as Hillary Clinton carries them by 65 percentage points (down from the 77 percentage points for John Kerry).

You need to rethink your scenario answers, Kingpoleon.